


Let It Out and Let It In

by rosie_berber



Series: An Assortment of Destiel Ficlets and Codas [7]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 12x22, 12x23, Destiel feels, Feelings, Hey Jude, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-11-01 07:57:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10917612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosie_berber/pseuds/rosie_berber
Summary: Oh hey, don't mind me. I'm just over here quietly freaking out about the season finale.But honestly - I want them to at least reference Dean getting "what he needed most." And what a clusterfuck it has been - how his idolizing his mother has led to his expectations being disappointed over and over.I don't care to speculate about the Nephilim plotline (because I don't really care?) (although I want it to end disastrously and have season 13 pick up in some hellish future) nor much of the BMoL stuff (because yeah, my Eileen!girl feelings are still raw as fuck) but really, about a low-key thing I think has been happening all season with Dean.In him recognizing, in true Crowley fashion, that he deserves to be loved.





	Let It Out and Let It In

* * *

 

 _You gave me what I needed most. I want to do the same for you._   
  
Dean once thought the gesture was a gift. But time - it gives you a sense of perspective, if nothing else. Because Amara - she might have done it for the right reasons. The primordial entity version of flipping the bird to the natural order and the like. Raising Mary from the dead. Because of him. _For him._   
  
She was what he thought he needed most. For most of his life, she was bound to the width and height of that photograph he cherished so deeply. That photograph the sole reminder Dean had that those memories he had of her - of warm apple pie and the sweet sound of a Beatles song at bedtime - that they weren't complete fabrications.   
  
But that photograph - like Dean's recollections of his mother - was now a false thing. The British Men of Letters had seen to that. And Mary? If you'd asked Dean a year ago - having his mother right there at his side, in the flesh, in three dimensions rather than confined to the two of the photograph - that'd've been as close to heaven as he could've imagined.   
  
Nothing like this fresh version of hell he's currently living - one hand pressed firmly against the rupturing wound in her gut as the other clasps her hand within his own, a hand quickly growing cold. Because Dean's certain that moment a year ago - when the sun was supposed to die and didn't - Amara found a fate worse than death to curse Dean with.   
  
Of losing his mother - no longer flawless - again. 

 

* * *

  
  
Mary grits her teeth and clenches her eyes closed tight. She's had her fair share of battle scars - but this one - it had fatal written all over it.   
  
But the pain - it was in the pain that she found herself again - that whatever they - whatever he had done to her started to unravel.   
  
As she herself came undone.   
  
The first time she died - she hadn't had the time to say goodbye.   
  
This time around - she'd made her fair share of mistakes. But hell if that was going to be one of them.   
  
"Dean..." she grunts, the single syllable of her firstborn’s name almost knocking her out.

 

The name of a man who had weathered several apocalypses and - somehow - managed to come out the other side a better man.

 

“Just another minute Mom,” Dean nearly demanded. “He’s so close.”

 

Her face softened into a smile at the mention of the angel. But her thoughts inside did not match her expression. _A few minutes might be more than I’ve got_.

 

And so - with what Mary Winchester was convinced could be the very last breaths afforded to her on Earth - in a field she had stained scarlet with her blood - she sang.

 

Words that once had afforded Dean solace in his loneliest moments.

Words that now seemed to have some meaning important enough to depart before giving up the ghost.

 

 _Remember to let him into your heart_ _  
_ _Then you can start to make it better._

 

Mary stopped before the nah-nah-nahs.

 

As she struggled to hold onto the life pouring out of her, Dean couldn’t hold it back anymore. He cried - tears streaming down both of his cheeks as he clung onto what he was certain was the last memory he would ever have of his mother.

 

Taking her into his arms and cradling her, he hushed a last “I love you.”

 

Into his flannel, caked with dirt and blood and God knows what else, Mary stopped breathing. For Dean - a century seemed to pass between the _better_ and his arrival.

 

Thankfully, it wasn’t quite that long.

 

Because when Castiel extended his hand towards Mary’s abdomen - when that blue light left his body and entered hers - it was not for nothing.

 

Because she stirred and shook - coming back from the dead twice in a calendar year will do that to a person - but she was okay.

 

Dean held his mother - imperfect and fragile - within his arms. He felt her warmth and clung to it like a kid whose gone out for recess without a coat and isn’t let back in.

 

And while he rocked her back and forth, that song played in his mind.

 

 _So let it out and let it in,_   
_Hey, Jude, begin_   
_You're waiting for someone to perform with_   
_And don't you know that it's just you,_   
_Hey, Jude, you'll do_ _  
The movement you need is on your shoulder._

 

A hand rested upon Dean’s shoulder - the same hand that had saved him nearly a decade ago. A hand belonging to a being who had saved what Dean had thought he needed most in this world.

 

It is in that moment it was clear for the first time what Amara’s gift really was.

 

What he longed for in the past was not what he needed most. He didn’t need some version of Mary that wasn’t real - nor the childhood he had been denied. He needed to make peace with that past, ugly as it may have been - for his future. _For what he needed most._

 

As Dean looks up into eyes that indescribable shade of blue - ten years wash over him in seconds. Of the ups and downs - of the sacrifices and betrayals - of the bond he tried like hell to make less profound. Towards a being who’d watched over him, rebelled for him, defied heaven for him, but most important of all - loved him.

 

 _All of him_.

 

The war was still ongoing but - in that moment - Dean Winchester smiles.

 

For he was finally ready to let himself have what he needed.


End file.
